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thegirlwiththemouseyhair*Again, I'm posting this on behalf of the author as part of the Party Like It's 1999 Ficathon.
** To my writers/participants: IF you would rather post this in your own journal and have me link to your entry, then do so, send me the link, and I can delete the post in which I have posted your story. Either way the story will be linked on the master list of submissions.
Title: For the Sake of the Children
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
arwen_kenobi
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine. No profit. Just for fun. Please don’t sue. (Though Elerin Lia and baby Lithias are mine)
Summary: DeTaran House will raise your children if you cannot…unless the Jedi come around
Elerin Lia had known from the time that she had left the DeTaran House for Orphans that she would one day work there. The first thought that had entered five year old Elerin’s mind when the Law Enforcers had told her that her parents had died in the fire that had consumed her home was that she didn’t want to be an orphan. Orphans never faired well in the stories she read. They died on street corners, they were abused by family members, they were abused by foster families, and they met all sorts of misfortunes that non-orphans seemed to avoid. Even the ones that were happily adopted were still lonely. They were in a family and not in a family all at once. Elerin could not think of a sadder state of being and she wanted no part of it.
She had had no living relatives so no time was wasted in shipping her off to DeTaran House. Elerin remembered how terrified she’d been, how much had she wondered if this is what going to prison felt like and which evils she had read about would befall her first.
DeTaran House was not like the horrible places she’d read about. Nothing horrible happened to her there aside from a broken arm, which had been her own doing, and nothing had happened to her upon leaving it. DeTaran House was more home to her now than the little cottage on Cheberran Way had ever been. Would she have preferred to grow up with her parents? Certainly. DeTaran House, though, was the closest place to a home and a family she had and she had become its greatest advocate. DeTaran House will raise your children if you cannot, she promised. It was a promise she had kept to countless dead or inept parents for nearly ten years. Every time a child was brought to them was a call to honour that promise. DeTaran House will raise your children if you cannot.
Then came along Baby Lithias and the Jedi.
- - -
It had started out as a normal ‘found’ admission. Baby Lithias, named after the flower bed she had been found in by the Law Enforcers, was three months old and had been dropped off at DeTaran House alone at 2300 hours the previous night after no family had been found to claim her. All standard health tests were performed along with a midichlorian test, which was merely a formality. All Republic members had to submit children to a midichlorian test and report the findings but Teranites did not birth Force Sensitive children. In the centuries of membership, in the centuries of midichlorian screening, the Teran system had produced three Force Sensitive beings. None of these children had been given up by their parents.
Baby Lithias’s midichlorian count showed her to be a perfect candidate for the Jedi and Elerin, being the one in charge of the girl’s admission, was informed that a team of Jedi would be coming to pick the girl up.
“What if I don’t want her to go?” she’d asked the kind looking woman, Master Adi Gallia, who was dealing with her case. “What if I think she’d be better off to stay at DeTaran House?”
“She will be cared for here,” Master Gallia told her with the precise tone of someone who had given this speech too many times and who cared little for the opinions of those on the receiving end of it. “She will be instructed here and she might, with training, become a Jedi Knight in service of the Republic.”
Elerin stabbed her finger at the image of the Jedi Master. “Might become a Jedi Knight. I know what happens to the children who aren’t chosen to be apprentices.” She shuddered to think of those poor children, cast out from the only family they’d known because they hadn’t met some expectation that only a select few ever would. “You have students there, not children. They spend their entire lives working to be this ideal, and I’m sure no other alternative is granted to them or expected from them, and then they’re cast aside if you happen to be short on available Masters!” It was horrendous, really. “Tell me, with a straight face, that this is the best future for Lithias!”
Master Gallia kept a straight face and told her that it was the best future for Lithias. Elerin had never met a Jedi before this moment and she decided that they were the most maddening, self concerned, self motivated group of people she’d ever encountered. That opinion was further entrenched with the next comment from the woman.
“In any case, it is not your decision to make. Republic Law states that orphans with acceptable midichlorian counts for admission to the Jedi Temple are to be taken there.”
Elerin knew her jaw was hanging open. Part of her told her to quickly snap it closed before she made herself look even more like an idiot but she stood there agape for a few moments longer before speaking the Teranite law that had defined her existence for her entire life. “DeTaran House, in the eyes of the law, is the parent of the child from the moment they are brought to our doors,” she intoned with restrained fury. “As a representative of DeTaran House I am refusing to hand over Lithias to you.”
“Republic law supersedes planetary law in this matter.” There was a shine of what might be sympathy in Adi Gallia’s eyes but Elerin knew it could not be. “You have no choice.” Another pause. “A Jedi team will be at DeTaran House in three days time.” The screen went dark then and Elerin had no clue whether she or the Jedi woman had ended the transmission.
Three days. A Jedi team would arrive and steal this child from its legal parents in three days.
In three days she would tear the Jedi Order apart.
- - -
The case of Elerin Lia versus the Jedi Order never came to fruition in time for the Jedi’s arrival. No Legal Expert on the planet would touch the case and very few even appreciated her point of view. It seemed she was not the first person to raise issue with the Jedi on this point but the precedent was not in her favour. Everything Master Gallia had said was true. “Every kid dreams of being a Jedi,” one man had told her. “Here’s one that has a chance and you want to keep her here? Why?”
Why. It was the question that faced her at every turn. From ever legal office, to every co worker, to the Representative to the Republic’s office, the question of why she wanted to hold this child back echoed around her like she was trapped in a cave.
Why, they wanted to know. According to her research seven percent of children who were able to be Jedi were not given up by their parents. Why so high a number? Why did mothers and fathers keep their children with them instead of letting them chase a dream? A dream that these children were being forced into since they themselves were far too young to have any opinion on the matter.
It was a parent’s job to protect their children until they were able to protect themselves. What kind of parent would send their child into such uncertainty? It was just irresponsible in her eyes. Simply irresponsible.
What sort of law did the Republic have anyway? To favour these force sensitive children while ignoring the others. Force sensitive children needed special care and special training, yes, but did that have to be supplied by the Jedi? What about those seven percent that were not given to the Jedi? Did they not turn out alright?
There was too much uncertainty in this. Too much to allow a child to face.
“Something wrong Miss Lia?”
Jedi Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi was a difficult person to hate, as was his Master. Qui-Gon Jinn was working with the child at the present moment. Apparently that meant no one could be in the room aside from Jinn and Lithias but Elerin doubted that. Kenobi seemed to want to stay out with her. He had been keeping an eye on her ever since they had arrived. She smiled where she sat, not caring whether or not the apprentice could see her. Of course they had been informed of her objections.
“Go on and say it.” The smile on her face broadened at the stunned silence behind her. This one was easier to faze than Master Gallia. “I know you’re either hanging out here because you want to say something to me about this situation or because your Master has ordered you.” Master, she thought. What sort of family encourages the children to refer to their elders as Master?
The young Jedi sighed heavily. It almost made Elerin turn her head around but before she could fully reject the idea she found herself sharing her seat with Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“Have you ever dealt with Force sensitive children before?” He asked.
“You know the answer to that,” Elerin snorted. “You also know that it does not matter. Force sensitive children are children too.”
Kenobi nodded but his expression had not changed. “Children, yes, but children with special concerns. Would you treat a child who is deaf differently from a child who is not? No. Would you have to make certain accommodations for them? Yes. You do not have the facilities here.”
“We can adapt,” Elerin snapped, her eyes boring into Kenobi’s. “We have never turned away a child-“
“And you still have not. You’re still doing what is in the best interests of the child.”
Elerin was silent for a moment. She couldn’t afford to be so for too long or else the boy would think that he’d won. “You may be better for her,” she began. “You may be more equipped but nothing can replace family. We provide that and you do not have the facilities for that. Do you not wish you had a more family oriented life right now?”
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s expression was one of bafflement and his answer was a shock to Elerin. “I do have a family oriented life.” It wasn’t a lie and it was said as easily as if she had asked him his name. He paused for a moment. “My Master is my father. My friends are my siblings. Precious few of us know or see our birth families. We’re united by that along with what we are striving for. DeTaran House works the same way. Your family is DeTaran house, my family is the Jedi. Can you not see the similarity in that? The family in that?”
Elerin shook her head. “I cannot accept that.” The shook her head again. “I…no, I cannot accept that. Lithias is a part of DeTaran House and we want her here. You are taking her away from us.” She glared at the apprentice. “You claim not to be child stealers but you are doing an excellent job at playing the part of one.”
“Padawan? Miss Lia?” That was the Master’s voice. “The assessment is complete.”
The report was brief. Lithias would be leaving with them and there was nothing that Elerin could do to change that. So she elected to say nothing. Elerin was allowed a final five minutes with her. She held the child close and swore to her that she would find a way to bring her home. She had yet to try any off world Legal Experts and DeTaran House had a promise to keep.
“I am not done with you yet,” she found herself saying to the Jedi transport as it blasted away into space. “I am far from done with you.”
** To my writers/participants: IF you would rather post this in your own journal and have me link to your entry, then do so, send me the link, and I can delete the post in which I have posted your story. Either way the story will be linked on the master list of submissions.
Title: For the Sake of the Children
Author:
arwen_kenobiRating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine. No profit. Just for fun. Please don’t sue. (Though Elerin Lia and baby Lithias are mine)
Summary: DeTaran House will raise your children if you cannot…unless the Jedi come around
Elerin Lia had known from the time that she had left the DeTaran House for Orphans that she would one day work there. The first thought that had entered five year old Elerin’s mind when the Law Enforcers had told her that her parents had died in the fire that had consumed her home was that she didn’t want to be an orphan. Orphans never faired well in the stories she read. They died on street corners, they were abused by family members, they were abused by foster families, and they met all sorts of misfortunes that non-orphans seemed to avoid. Even the ones that were happily adopted were still lonely. They were in a family and not in a family all at once. Elerin could not think of a sadder state of being and she wanted no part of it.
She had had no living relatives so no time was wasted in shipping her off to DeTaran House. Elerin remembered how terrified she’d been, how much had she wondered if this is what going to prison felt like and which evils she had read about would befall her first.
DeTaran House was not like the horrible places she’d read about. Nothing horrible happened to her there aside from a broken arm, which had been her own doing, and nothing had happened to her upon leaving it. DeTaran House was more home to her now than the little cottage on Cheberran Way had ever been. Would she have preferred to grow up with her parents? Certainly. DeTaran House, though, was the closest place to a home and a family she had and she had become its greatest advocate. DeTaran House will raise your children if you cannot, she promised. It was a promise she had kept to countless dead or inept parents for nearly ten years. Every time a child was brought to them was a call to honour that promise. DeTaran House will raise your children if you cannot.
Then came along Baby Lithias and the Jedi.
- - -
It had started out as a normal ‘found’ admission. Baby Lithias, named after the flower bed she had been found in by the Law Enforcers, was three months old and had been dropped off at DeTaran House alone at 2300 hours the previous night after no family had been found to claim her. All standard health tests were performed along with a midichlorian test, which was merely a formality. All Republic members had to submit children to a midichlorian test and report the findings but Teranites did not birth Force Sensitive children. In the centuries of membership, in the centuries of midichlorian screening, the Teran system had produced three Force Sensitive beings. None of these children had been given up by their parents.
Baby Lithias’s midichlorian count showed her to be a perfect candidate for the Jedi and Elerin, being the one in charge of the girl’s admission, was informed that a team of Jedi would be coming to pick the girl up.
“What if I don’t want her to go?” she’d asked the kind looking woman, Master Adi Gallia, who was dealing with her case. “What if I think she’d be better off to stay at DeTaran House?”
“She will be cared for here,” Master Gallia told her with the precise tone of someone who had given this speech too many times and who cared little for the opinions of those on the receiving end of it. “She will be instructed here and she might, with training, become a Jedi Knight in service of the Republic.”
Elerin stabbed her finger at the image of the Jedi Master. “Might become a Jedi Knight. I know what happens to the children who aren’t chosen to be apprentices.” She shuddered to think of those poor children, cast out from the only family they’d known because they hadn’t met some expectation that only a select few ever would. “You have students there, not children. They spend their entire lives working to be this ideal, and I’m sure no other alternative is granted to them or expected from them, and then they’re cast aside if you happen to be short on available Masters!” It was horrendous, really. “Tell me, with a straight face, that this is the best future for Lithias!”
Master Gallia kept a straight face and told her that it was the best future for Lithias. Elerin had never met a Jedi before this moment and she decided that they were the most maddening, self concerned, self motivated group of people she’d ever encountered. That opinion was further entrenched with the next comment from the woman.
“In any case, it is not your decision to make. Republic Law states that orphans with acceptable midichlorian counts for admission to the Jedi Temple are to be taken there.”
Elerin knew her jaw was hanging open. Part of her told her to quickly snap it closed before she made herself look even more like an idiot but she stood there agape for a few moments longer before speaking the Teranite law that had defined her existence for her entire life. “DeTaran House, in the eyes of the law, is the parent of the child from the moment they are brought to our doors,” she intoned with restrained fury. “As a representative of DeTaran House I am refusing to hand over Lithias to you.”
“Republic law supersedes planetary law in this matter.” There was a shine of what might be sympathy in Adi Gallia’s eyes but Elerin knew it could not be. “You have no choice.” Another pause. “A Jedi team will be at DeTaran House in three days time.” The screen went dark then and Elerin had no clue whether she or the Jedi woman had ended the transmission.
Three days. A Jedi team would arrive and steal this child from its legal parents in three days.
In three days she would tear the Jedi Order apart.
- - -
The case of Elerin Lia versus the Jedi Order never came to fruition in time for the Jedi’s arrival. No Legal Expert on the planet would touch the case and very few even appreciated her point of view. It seemed she was not the first person to raise issue with the Jedi on this point but the precedent was not in her favour. Everything Master Gallia had said was true. “Every kid dreams of being a Jedi,” one man had told her. “Here’s one that has a chance and you want to keep her here? Why?”
Why. It was the question that faced her at every turn. From ever legal office, to every co worker, to the Representative to the Republic’s office, the question of why she wanted to hold this child back echoed around her like she was trapped in a cave.
Why, they wanted to know. According to her research seven percent of children who were able to be Jedi were not given up by their parents. Why so high a number? Why did mothers and fathers keep their children with them instead of letting them chase a dream? A dream that these children were being forced into since they themselves were far too young to have any opinion on the matter.
It was a parent’s job to protect their children until they were able to protect themselves. What kind of parent would send their child into such uncertainty? It was just irresponsible in her eyes. Simply irresponsible.
What sort of law did the Republic have anyway? To favour these force sensitive children while ignoring the others. Force sensitive children needed special care and special training, yes, but did that have to be supplied by the Jedi? What about those seven percent that were not given to the Jedi? Did they not turn out alright?
There was too much uncertainty in this. Too much to allow a child to face.
“Something wrong Miss Lia?”
Jedi Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi was a difficult person to hate, as was his Master. Qui-Gon Jinn was working with the child at the present moment. Apparently that meant no one could be in the room aside from Jinn and Lithias but Elerin doubted that. Kenobi seemed to want to stay out with her. He had been keeping an eye on her ever since they had arrived. She smiled where she sat, not caring whether or not the apprentice could see her. Of course they had been informed of her objections.
“Go on and say it.” The smile on her face broadened at the stunned silence behind her. This one was easier to faze than Master Gallia. “I know you’re either hanging out here because you want to say something to me about this situation or because your Master has ordered you.” Master, she thought. What sort of family encourages the children to refer to their elders as Master?
The young Jedi sighed heavily. It almost made Elerin turn her head around but before she could fully reject the idea she found herself sharing her seat with Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“Have you ever dealt with Force sensitive children before?” He asked.
“You know the answer to that,” Elerin snorted. “You also know that it does not matter. Force sensitive children are children too.”
Kenobi nodded but his expression had not changed. “Children, yes, but children with special concerns. Would you treat a child who is deaf differently from a child who is not? No. Would you have to make certain accommodations for them? Yes. You do not have the facilities here.”
“We can adapt,” Elerin snapped, her eyes boring into Kenobi’s. “We have never turned away a child-“
“And you still have not. You’re still doing what is in the best interests of the child.”
Elerin was silent for a moment. She couldn’t afford to be so for too long or else the boy would think that he’d won. “You may be better for her,” she began. “You may be more equipped but nothing can replace family. We provide that and you do not have the facilities for that. Do you not wish you had a more family oriented life right now?”
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s expression was one of bafflement and his answer was a shock to Elerin. “I do have a family oriented life.” It wasn’t a lie and it was said as easily as if she had asked him his name. He paused for a moment. “My Master is my father. My friends are my siblings. Precious few of us know or see our birth families. We’re united by that along with what we are striving for. DeTaran House works the same way. Your family is DeTaran house, my family is the Jedi. Can you not see the similarity in that? The family in that?”
Elerin shook her head. “I cannot accept that.” The shook her head again. “I…no, I cannot accept that. Lithias is a part of DeTaran House and we want her here. You are taking her away from us.” She glared at the apprentice. “You claim not to be child stealers but you are doing an excellent job at playing the part of one.”
“Padawan? Miss Lia?” That was the Master’s voice. “The assessment is complete.”
The report was brief. Lithias would be leaving with them and there was nothing that Elerin could do to change that. So she elected to say nothing. Elerin was allowed a final five minutes with her. She held the child close and swore to her that she would find a way to bring her home. She had yet to try any off world Legal Experts and DeTaran House had a promise to keep.
“I am not done with you yet,” she found herself saying to the Jedi transport as it blasted away into space. “I am far from done with you.”
